'70s Rock Star Gary Glitter Faces Final Years Behind Bars After Abuse Convictions

A British pop star from the 1970s will likely die in prison after he was convicted of sexually abusing young girls over the course of decades. 

Paul Gadd is best known as Gary Glitter and for his song “Rock and Roll Part 2,” which was featured in the movie Joker. He is now barely able to walk, is almost completely deaf and spends up to 23 hours a day alone in his southwest England prison cell.

Other inmates, according to the New York Post, view Glitter as arrogant. He is kept away from them as a measure of protection. 

The performer is serving a 16-year sentence for abusing three young girls. He was briefly released in 2023 (inmates in the U.K. serving a determinate sentence are usually released automatically halfway through their sentences) but was quickly hauled back to prison after authorities found “disturbing behavior involving minors,” the Post reported. 

Last year, parole officials revoked Glitter’s release, ruling he still posed a risk due to an “uncontrolled interest” in young girls.

Glitter’s time in prison is marked by extended isolation. He’s being held at HMP Channings Wood prison in Devon, England, about 200 miles west of London. He receives his meals in his cell, and he gets a weekly allowance for snacks and other personal items. 

Glitter was first arrested in 1999 after police found thousands of images of child sexual abuse on his computer, and he spent four months in jail. In 2006, he was kicked out of Cambodia amid alleged sex offenses and later convicted in Vietnam for abusing two girls ages 10 and 11.

He admitted the 11-year-old had slept in his bed and was forced to give compensatory payments to the girls’ families. He was imprisoned for three years and then deported back to Britain from Vietnam upon his early release in August 2008.

Glitter was most recently arrested in London in 2012 and sentenced in 2015 for attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of having sex with a girl under 13. 

Those charges partly stemmed from an attack on two girls ages 12 and 13 in the 1970s after he invited them to his dressing room and isolated them from their mothers. His third victim was younger than 10 years old when he crept into her bed and tried to rape her in 1975.

Glitter was charged with these crimes nearly 40 years after the fact when he became the first person arrested under the British police’s Operation Yewtree, which launched in 2012 by the Metropolitan Police to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse by British radio and TV presenter Jimmy Savile and others.

Judge Alistair McCreath said during Glitter’s 2015 sentencing hearing that he found "no real evidence" that the pop star had atoned for his crimes. Glitter denied the allegations against him.

“You did all of them real and lasting damage, and you did so for no other reason than to obtain sexual gratification for yourself of a wholly improper kind,” McCreath said.

Glitter was then released from prison after serving half of his 16-year sentence in 2023. 

He was fitted with a GPS tag, and probation officers kept a close eye on him. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said, "sex offenders like [Glitter] are closely monitored" by the police and probation officers and "face some of the strictest licence conditions.”

Glitter found himself back in prison a month later, accused of breaking the terms of his probation. It was reported that he had tried to access the dark web to view downloaded images of children.

“Protecting the public is our number one priority,” a Ministry of Justice statement said. “That’s why we set tough license conditions and so when offenders breach them, we don’t hesitate to return them to custody.” 

The use of Glitter’s song in a pivotal moment of the Joker film caused a stir online, with people asking why it was chosen despite Gadd’s crimes.

Snapper Music said it had owned the master rights to Gadd’s music since February 1997 and that he was not entitled to any royalties. He did not make money after his music was used in Joker.

When NME asked Jeff Groth, who helped edit the film, why that song was chosen, he said it related to the protagonist and the character’s mindset at that point in the film.

“Ultimately, what we’re dealing with at that point is not exactly a good guy,” Groth said. “It’s time-appropriate and kind of the music in his head, as much as anything.”

The site asked Groth if the song was to show that Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, “has now become the titular villain and has completed his descent into madness.” 

“Yeah. I would say that we weren’t necessarily trying to hit it on the head, but it’s definitely the sort of thing that he might have listened to at that point,” Groth responded.